Red light for signalman on Orakei line

By JULIE MIDDLETON

The end of the line comes at precisely 9.26pm. As the empty Friday night service 4219 to Westfield via Orakei prepares to leave platform four at Auckland railway station, Ken Woods is standing before a row of 128 metal levers.

They poke out of an old-fashioned wooden cabinet which runs the length of a small red-brick building overlooking the tracks.

Above the levers, a hand-painted map of Auckland's tracks identifies the idling train with one red light.

Mr Woods pulls one of the levers - it's number 75, he says - towards him. Inside the wooden cabinet, mechanical arms move.

Out in the chilly night underneath Parnell's Gladstone Rd bridge, compressed air hisses and metal graunches, opening the Orakei line.

Mr Woods grasps another lever: number 13, which changes from red to green the "ready" signal sitting some distance from the platform.

Last of all, he pulls number 11. The light right outside the signal box flashes green and the train starts clanking its way forward. Mr Woods blasts the building's air horn twice "to send him on his way".

And that's it. "Auckland Station box A", in use since the Beach Rd station opened in November 1930, performs its last service.

At 9.30pm, its power supply is cut. For the first time in 73 years, there are no red lights flicking on and off on the map; no dinging bell to warn of carriages trundling into range.

It's a strange and sad moment, admits 64-year-old Mr Woods. Leaving the signal box feels like departing a much-loved home. He's been running the "extremely reliable" box since October 1984.

Such is its value to rail fans, says Tranz Rail signals engineer-in-charge Allan Neilson, that the Rail Heritage Trust has photographed it for the national archives; other groups hope to scavenge parts.

The mothballed signal box overlooks all that's left of train services at the railway station now Britomart is open - the wind-blasted platform four. Renamed Strand Station, after the road alongside, it will be a stop on loop routes that don't go to the central city.

Platform four once belonged to a family of seven, each 274m long and able to fit seven trains. Remaining of what was once nearly 2km of platform overall is a pebble-strewn 100m stretch, the cream paint of its overhang peeling, its lights smashed. There are no seats and no timetables; nobody is on the train idling alongside.

Other platforms have been disembowelled so Britomart-bound lines can cross them.

Today, the signalmen are working in "solitary confinement", says Mr Woods, in a windowless, concrete room at Britomart: the signal box has been compressed into two computers and three monitors.

But he's not unhappy. A computer buff, Mr Woods spends his spare time keeping sky-trains moving on flight simulators.

"I sit there after work for three or four hours, flying from London to New York. So I'm in my element."